Monday, January 31, 2011

Charlotte County Sheriff's deputies said the attack happened at the mother's home. Jerome Nubin of Punta Gorda is charged with sexual battery on a 12-year-old, aggravated assault, kidnapping and domestic battery. He is being held without bond in the Charlotte County Jail. Detectives said Nubin threatened the mother and child with a baseball bat. He also slapped and punched the mother before assaulting the child. The sheriff's office was contacted by the child's grandfather. The grandfather says Nubin also threatened him with a bat and threw bricks, a child's scooter and a lamp at him.

"Two administrators of porn sites have been sentenced to death in two different (court) branches and (the verdicts) have been sent to the supreme court for confirmation," Dolatabadi said, without naming the two convicts. In December 2010, Canada expressed concern over the reported death sentence handed down to an Iranian-born Canadian resident for allegedly designing an adult website. Saeed Malekpour, 35, was convicted of "designing and moderating adult content websites," "agitation against the regime" in Tehran, and "insulting the sanctity of Islam," according to an online campaign calling for his release. Malekpour was detained in Iran after returning in 2008 to visit his ailing father. He was sentenced to death in December 2010. The Netherlands froze contacts with Tehran after the recent hanging of an Iranian woman with Dutch citizenship for drug smuggling, having initially been arrested for taking part in anti-government protests. Adultery, murder, drug trafficking and other major crimes are all punishable by death in the Islamic republic of Iran.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Prosecutors charged that Michael Clare, the 38-year-old married leader of the Harvest Worship Center in the Wakefield section of the Bronx, repeatedly raped the girl since she was 12 years old. Prosecutors said at his indictment that Clare has impregnated the girl, who is now 15 years old. Authorities said they learned of the alleged abuse in June 2010, when the girl told her parents and police that Clare had sexually preyed on her for years. DNA evidence implicated Clare, prosecutors said. Clare was arrested on June 14, 2010 on second-degree rape charges, but the grand jury upped the charges to first-degree rape. Clare, who is also the principal of Harvest Prep, a school run out of the church, began preaching when he was 11, and became a pastor at 26, according to court documents. Clare is being held in lieu of $50,000 bond. He faces up to 25 years in state prison if convicted of first-degree rape.

Though whites are still most likely to marry other whites. The most common interracial marriage is between a white and a white Hispanic. White Hispanics behave very much like whites in shunning blacks as marriage partners, while black Hispanics have a very high intermarriage rate with non-Hispanic blacks.

The confirmed cases were among a group of 452 people who attended a family gathering in the Dominican Republic, said Eugenia Sader, Venezuela's minister of health. Others who attended the party were urged to get tested for the intestinal disease, which can prove fatal within hours if left untreated. Sader said in October 2010, when the cholera outbreak erupted in Haiti, that the last case of cholera in Venezuela was reported in 1991. In addition to the 37 cases in Venezuela, 12 others who attended the family party are in the Dominican Republic; one in Mexico; two in Madrid, Spain; and one in Boston. Almost 4,000 people have died in Haiti from cholera and almost 200,000 have been sickened. The Dominican Republic has reported 244 cases. A man of Haitian descent died in the province of Altagracia. Cholera, an intestinal infection caused by ingestion of bacteria-contaminated food or water, causes watery diarrhea and vomiting, which can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death if not treated promptly. The disease is one of the leading causes of death in the world, particularly in developing countries. There are an estimated 3 million to 5 million cholera cases and 100,000 to 120,000 deaths every year worldwide.

A colossal drug trafficking ring operating in the Greater Toronto area was cracked with the arrest of seven men and two women charged together on 66 counts of importing and trafficking in opium and other illegal drugs originating from Iran. Another three members of the ring are on the wanted list. The arrests were made at the end of a year-long investigation, code-named Project Khiar, by the Toronto Police Drugs squad coordinated with the York and Peel regional police and the Canada Border Service. Some 190 kilograms of opium valued at $13 million was seized along with 44 kilograms of Ephedrine, (an ingredient of Crystal Methamphetamine) and 44 kilograms of Ephedrine (from which about 40 kilograms of Crystal Methamphetamine can be extracted) together valued at $8.8 million. Fardin Ayati-Ghaffari, 47, Mansour Chegini, 50, Saeid Chegini, 27, Naeim Dehghansai Ghahramankou, 27, Shahin Azhadi, 38, all of Richmond Hill, and Mehrdad Barehi, 40 and Somayyrh Fatholli-Ghocheh, 26, both of Toronto have all been charged on a range of between two and 22 offenses including possession and global conspiracy to import and traffic in opium, heroin, cocaine, marijuana, ephedrine and methadone, as well as and obstruction of justice. An eighth person Crystal Lee Eden, 31, of Toronto was charged with possession of cannabis. Police are still hunting for Lakhbir Shokar, 46, Mohamed Medhi, 41, and Jamshid Royan, 41, all of no fixed address, wanted for conspiring to import and traffic in ephedrine and opium. The Toronto police drug squad suspects that other people may have been used as unwitting couriers receiving packages or shipments of concealed opium originating from Iran.

Orel Vasquez, 20, Christian Vasquez, 26, and Juan Leon, 29, approached a border crossing point at Nogales, Arizona and told U.S. officers that they were wanted for a murder in the United States and were turning themselves in. U.S. officials checked their crime database and confirmed that the men were wanted for a 2009 murder in Tucson. They were taken into custody, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said. The three men were wanted for the murder of 15-year-old Brenda Arenas, who was shot in the head during a botched carjacking in Tucson on August 5, 2009. She died in her mother's arms soon after the attack. Her 3-year-old sister watched the crime from the backseat of the car. None of the men had papers to legally enter the United States.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

He said that unsustainable levels of public spending and immigration were among the problems inherited by his Coalition when they won the keys to Downing Street. Britain accepts more non-European immigrants than any other EU country except Spain.

Law enforcement in Stanislaus County focuses a lot of attention on Latino street gangs because of the number of members and the extent of their criminal activities: drug trafficking, robberies and homicides. But Southeast Asian gangs, while less prevalent in the Northern San Joaquin Valley, are still part of the area's criminal landscape and are just as dangerous as their Latino rivals. The deadly nature of the Southeast Asian gangs was evident in Modesto after a married couple and their daughter were killed during an apparent robbery at their Yosemite Boulevard Asian goods market. Vanh Thammavongsa, 55, was pronounced dead at the scene. His 49-year-old wife, Phou- vieng Thammavongsa, and their daughter were taken by ambulance to a hospital. His wife died at the hospital. Daughter Nanci Thammavongsa, 28, died after hospital officials turned off her life-support machines. The Thammavongsas were refugees from Laos. Thou Yang of the Hmong Association of Stanislaus County said the deaths of the Thammavongsas are shocking. Three young men - known by police to be members of a Modesto Southeast Asian gang inspired by the black gang known as the Crips - have been charged with three counts of murder in the deaths of the Thammavongsas. Oloth "Dicky" Phommahaxay, 18, Sophon Theoun Ting, 16, and Chris Douangkham, 15, are members of the CWA Crips, according to a criminal complaint filed in court. The Asian teenagers are accused of murder in the deaths of the Thammavongsas, with gang enhancements that could bring longer sentences. They pleaded not guilty. "Southeast Asian gangs are pretty violent groups," said Pouv, a member of the Modesto police Gang Investigations Unit. "The concept of disrespect is a big thing in these gangs. It's almost more personal than Latino gangs." He said disrespecting someone is like dishonoring yourself, and it's never tolerated. "Like the Latino gangs, they have a tendency to prey on victims of their own race," Pouv said.

The government of Malawi plans to punish persistent offenders "who foul the air". But locals fear that pinning responsibility on the crime will be difficult - and may lead to miscarriages of justice as "criminals" attempt to blame others for their offense. One Malawian said: "My goodness. What happens in a public place where a group is gathered. Do they lock up half a minibus? And how about at meetings where it is difficult to pinpoint "culprits"? Children will openly deny having passed bad air and point at an elder. Culturally, this is very embarrassing," she said. Another said: "We have serious issues affecting Malawians today. I do not know how fouling the air should take priority over regulating Chinese investments which do not employ locals, serious graft amongst legislators, especially those in the ruling party, and many more." The crime will be enforceable in a new "Local Court" system which will also have powers to punish a range of other crimes in the bill set to be debated in the country's parliament. These include insulting the modesty of a woman, challenging to fight a duel, and trespassing on a burial place. It also outlaws pretending to be a fortune teller.

A second Massachusetts resident has been diagnosed with cholera and four others are suspected of having the intestinal ailment, state disease trackers have reported. Like the man treated at Massachusetts General Hospital for the disease, the other patients attended a lavish wedding at a resort in the Dominican Republic and fell ill upon returning home. A young woman complaining of diarrhea — one of the hallmarks of cholera — was treated in the emergency room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and given oral rehydration. Preliminary testing found that the woman, who was not identified because of patient confidentiality laws, had cholera.

Sahra Bahrami, 46, was born in Iran but later gained Dutch citizenship. She was hanged for drug smuggling, according to Iranian officials. Bahrami was jailed for a year after being arrested for joining a protest in 2009, while visiting relatives. Dutch officials had said they were extremely concerned about her case. Her execution brings the total number hanged in the country so far in 2011 to 66, according to media reports. During a search of her house, authorities claim to have found 450g of cocaine and 420g of opium, the Tehran prosecutor's office said. "A drug trafficker named Sahra Bahrami, daughter of Ali, was hanged early on Saturday morning after she was convicted of selling and possessing drugs," the office said. It added that Bahrami was a member of an international drug gang who smuggled cocaine into the country using her Dutch connections. But Bahrami's daughter has been quoted as telling the New York-based rights group International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that the drug charges were fabricated. "She doesn't even smoke cigarettes, let alone possessing drugs. How could someone who participates in [post-]election gatherings and endangers her life, engage in such actions against her country?" she is quoted as saying. Bahrami's lawyer has expressed shock at the news. "I am bewildered as to how my client's death sentence was issued while her security charges had not yet been reviewed," Jinoos Sharif is quoted as telling the group. Dutch officials were denied access to her because Tehran does not recognise her dual nationality.

The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow's Domodedovo airport recently, intended to detonate a suicide belt near Red Square on New Year's Eve 2010 in an attack that could have killed hundreds. Security sources believe a message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her at a safe house. Islamist terrorists in Russia often use mobile phones as detonators. The bomber's handler, who is usually watching their charge, sends the bomber a text message in order to set off his or her explosive belt at the moment when it is thought they can inflict maximum casualties. The dead woman has not been identified, but her husband is apparently serving time in jail for being a member of a radical Islamic terrorist group. Security sources believe the New Year's Eve bomber and the airport bombers may have been members of a suicide squad trained in Pakistan's al-Qaida strongholds which was sent to target the Russian capital's transport system.

Friday, January 28, 2011

The five young men charged with killing him are black. Expect more of that sort of thing around here, Durham County Sheriff's Office Maj. Paul Martin said in a report. "The immediate future holds the potential for an ethnic war to break out between black and Latino gangs," said Martin. "Since at least 1997, some black criminals have continually robbed, assaulted and murdered Latinos. The targeting of innocent Latinos will soon manifest itself in violent ethnic conflict between blacks and Latinos." The trade of illegal drugs has a lot to do with the strife, because both black and Hispanic gang members battle for turf with respect to where dope gets sold. "I have watched since the 1970s as about 70% of the black community has retrogressed in Durham. A large percentage of young blacks have been sucked into this criminal culture, and many can barely read and write. This educational retrogression is attributable to the thug culture. Yet no one speaks out, except to grab for federal grant money to construct Utopian schemes," Martin said.

Marlon Alejandro Lozano-Montano of Minneapolis was charged with two counts of first-degree assault, including one for the benefit of a gang, and two counts of drive-by shooting, one for the benefit of a gang. Guadalupe Galeno-Hernandez, now 13, was shot in the neck, which severed her spinal cord. She remains hospitalized. It was the first of two violent crimes that Lozano-Montano is accused of committing that week. Three days after the shooting, according to a petition filed in Hennepin County Juvenile Court, Lozano-Montano and an accomplice beat a teenage boy with a crowbar. The victim in that case told police that Lozano-Montano asked him what gang he was in, and when the boy said he wasn't in a gang, Lozano-Montano beat him. During a police lineup, the victim picked Lozano-Montano, who was jailed in December 2010 and charged with two felony counts of second-degree assault.

Stephenson Choi Kim, 31, is accused of killing Venus Hyun, 22, in 2004 while shed dined with friends. Kim and six other gang members allegedly drove to the restaurant on March 14, 2004, where Hyun and six friends were eating dinner, prosecutors said. Two of the gang members went inside and asked the victims if any of them belonged to a gang. One of the people in Hyun's party, Richard Woodhead, told them he used to be in a gang but was no longer affiliated with them and the two gangs were not rivals. The pair then left and shared their conversation with Kim, prosecutors said. Kim then allegedly entered the crowded cafe with a firearm while the others waited outside. Moments later, Kim shot at the group with a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun, according to authorities. Hyun, whom prosecutors described as an innocent bystander, was shot in the back. The bullet ricocheted off her shoulder blade, ultimately lodging in her brain, prosecutors said. She was pronounced dead at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Instead, they spend all day studying the Talmud, and believe the government has the obligation to support them. And the government does so, providing them generous welfare benefits. These freeloaders also don’t believe in birth control, so they have huge families. 800,000 of the 7.4 million people in Israel belong to these ultra-orthodox communities, so obviously it’s costing the government a lot of money to support them. In fact, Israeli economists are starting to worry about the future of Israel, since about 30% of the nation’s school age children are ultra orthodox.

Of course, Rand Paul’s call for cutting off aid to Israel will go nowhere. Congressmen and Senators are deathly afraid of even being open to discussing it, for fear of the Israel lobby. And the conservatives are the worst of all. Michelle Bachmann practically worships Israel. So this proposal is going nowhere.

Which just shows how insane this country is. We’re borrowing $1.5 trillion dollars a year to give billions to Israel, which then turns around and spends it on welfare to support hundreds of thousands of freeloading religious freaks whose men refuse to work.

The trouble broke out in Tafawa Balewa in central Nigeria, a region that has seen an upsurge in violence between Christians and Muslims. Five mosques and about 50 homes were set alight as Christian and Muslim youths fought each other. Police eventually restored order, using roadblocks to contain the violence. Police commissioner Abdulkadir Mohammed Indabawa said the dispute began with a disagreement over money between the Christian owner of the billiards table and a Muslim player. Although the row was settled through mediation by local elders, the table was later burned. "The Christian youths accused Muslims of the act, which prompted them to go about burning houses and mosques," said Indabawa. "Clashes followed between Muslim and Christian groups and four people were killed as a result." Tafawa Balewa is close to the city of Jos in Nigeria's volatile Middle Belt, which sits between the mainly Muslim north and largely Christian south. The region has been a flash-point of tension between Hausa Muslims and Berom Christians. It has suffered repeated outbreaks of ethnic violence over the past decade, with deadly riots in 2001, 2008 and 2010.

Police have confirmed the death and say they have arrested one suspect. Uganda's Rolling Stone newspaper published the photographs of several people it said were gay, including Kato, with the headline "Hang them". The police say that though they have arrested one suspect, the main suspect - who they say lived with Kato - remains on the run. Homosexual acts are illegal in Uganda, with punishments of 14 years in prison. An MP recently tried to increase the penalties to include the death sentence in some cases. There has been a recent spate of "iron-bar killings" in Mukono, where Kato lived, in which people have been assaulted with pieces of metal. Witnesses have said that a man entered Kato's home near Kampala and beat him to death before leaving. His Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) Group said Kato had been receiving death threats since his name, photograph and address were published by Rolling Stone in 2010. Following a complaint by Kato and three others, a judge in November 2010 ordered Rolling Stone to stop publishing the photographs of people it said were homosexual, saying it contravened their right to privacy. Several activists said they had been attacked after their photographs were published. Rolling Stone editor Giles Muhame said he condemned the murder and that the paper had not wanted gays to be attacked. "There has been a lot of crime, it may not be because he is gay," he said. "We want the government to hang people who promote homosexuality, not for the public to attack them." Iron-bar killings were common in Uganda when former leader Idi Amin was in power in the 1970s.

Women show the opposite pattern. They are more likely to continue dating a man who has had a heterosexual affair than one who has had a homosexual affair. Overall, men demonstrated a 50% likelihood of continuing to date a partner who has had a homosexual affair and a 22% likelihood of staying with a woman after a heterosexual affair. Women demonstrated a 28% likelihood of continuing to date a boyfriend who has had a heterosexual affair and a 21% likelihood of staying with someone who has had a homosexual affair. The findings suggest men are more distressed by the type of infidelity that could threaten their paternity of offspring. Men may also view a partner's homosexual affair as an opportunity to mate with more than one woman simultaneously, satisfying men's greater desire for more partners.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

A high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is defending its decision to segregate its students by race and gender. The scheme, at McCaskey East High School, separates black students from the rest of the school body, and then further breaks it down into black females and black males. The school noticed that black students were not performing as well as other students, and that research had shown that same-race classes with strong same-race role models led to better academic results. The principal admitted that no other students were divided by race at the school, but he added that academic data dictated the school take a different approach with its black students. The idea came from an instructional coach at McCaskey East. She said statistics had shown about a third of McCaskey's African-Americans scored proficient or advanced in reading on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests, compared with 60% of white students and 42% of students overall. In mathematics, only 27% of black students scored proficient or advanced. She said research had shown that grouping black students by gender with a strong role model could boost both academic achievement and self-esteem.

Authorities said a black man who was caught having sex with show hogs will have his case presented to the Leflore County Grand Jury. Andrew Lee Nash, 52, was arrested on Dec. 3, 2010 after police set up surveillance cameras in the owner's stalls near U.S. Highway 82 and the Yazoo River. Greenwood Police Chief Henry Purnell said the hogs were examined by a local veterinarian, during a routine examination, and the owner was told that four of the hogs had a vaginal infection. "The owner of the animals knew someone was messing with his animals," said Chief Investigator Huntley Nevels. "And the veterinarian confirmed the sexual assault. So, the owner contacted police and the officers staked it out and caught him out there." Nash was arrested at the scene and charged with 12 counts of unnatural intercourse. If Nash is indicted and found guilty, he faces up to 120 years in jail.

This indicates a very early admixture between expanding African migrants and Neanderthals prior to or very early on the route of the out-of-Africa expansion that led to the successful colonization of the planet.

Noshir Gowadia, 66, had helped to design the propulsion system for the B-2 bomber. A court in Hawaii found him guilty in August 2010 of passing on information which helped China to design a stealth cruise missile. Prosecutors had hoped for a life sentence but said 32 years was "in many ways appropriate". Gowadia was accused of traveling to China between 2003 and 2005 while designing the missile. He was said to have been paid $110,000 - money that was used to pay off a mortgage on a luxury home on the island of Maui.

As the mayor of the town of Tiquicheo, she has become a key target for drug gangs who have turned the country into a grotesquely violent narco-state. But despite being scarred physically and mentally by the attacks, the extraordinarily brave Gorrostieta remains defiant. Gorrostieta, a mother-of-three, was first attacked on October 15, 2009 when she was driving through the town of El Limone with her husband. A group of armed men ambushed their vehicle, spraying the car with bullets. The mayor was left terribly injured while her husband José Sánchez Chávez was killed. Despite suffering such a devastating loss and battling back to fitness, Gorrostieta was determined not to be defeated. She returned to work and had made remarkable progress. But in January 2010, she was once again ambushed by armed and masked men. This time her injuries were even worse. She had to have a colostomy bag and suffers constant pain. Mexico has been torn apart by a spate of gang violence linked to drugs. More than 30,000 people have been killed in clashes between rival drug cartels and security forces since 2006. The country's mayors have become prominent targets - as have women holding office. In December 2010, it emerged that female police chief Hermila Garcia, had become just the latest victim of the bloody war. The 38-year-old had only taken over as the top law enforcement officer in the town of Meoqui two months before her death. La Jefa, as she was known, had taken on the role when no man was prepared to do it.

The results of a national exam show a stark achievement gap, with only 10% of black students proficient in science in the fourth grade, compared to 46% of whites. At the high school level, results were even more bleak, with 71% of black students scoring below the basic knowledge level, and just 4% proficient. Fifty-eight percent of Hispanic 12th-grade students scored below basic, as did 21% of whites. Minority students are one of the fastest growing parts of the youth population. The achievement gap was also more notable in certain states. In Mississippi, for example, 68% of black fourth grade students scored below basic, and just 4% were proficient.

Wisconsin’s fourth- and eighth-grade students overall scored above average on a national science assessment in 2009, but results continue to show worrisome trends for African-Americans. For black students in both grades, performance on the national science test was below average, and the achievement gap in eighth-grade science between Wisconsin’s black and white students was the highest in the nation, according to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In fourth grade, black students in Wisconsin had an average score that was 43 points lower than white students in the state. By eighth grade, that performance gap widened to a 44-point difference. Hispanic fourth-graders in Wisconsin scored 26 points lower than their white peers in the state, better than the national average of a 32-point difference. But, by eighth grade, the performance gap of 30 points between the state's white and Hispanic students was about the same as the national average.

In a study of 40,000 young women ages 14 to 25, researchers found that more black and Hispanic young women were tested for chlamydia compared with white young women - the numbers were 65%, 72% and 45%, respectively. Black young women were 2.7 times as likely and Hispanic women were 9.7 times as likely to be screened for the diseased as their white counterparts. When researchers looked at screenings based on public or private insurance status only, they found that young black and Hispanic women still had a greater chance of being screened than young white women.

New research shows that the increased incarceration of black and Hispanic men in the United States has contributed to more single-parent minority households and fewer minority high school dropouts. Between 1970 and 2000, researchers found that the nationwide incarceration rate for blacks and Hispanics 18 to 40 years of age increased 7.3 and 1.5 percentage points, respectively, while the rate of incarcerated whites grew by 1 percentage point. At the same time, the number of children living with never-married mothers rose 1 percentage point among whites, 3.4 percentage points among Hispanics and 18.5 percentage points among blacks, while the number of high school dropouts among all races was cut nearly in half. The results indicate that the increasing incarceration rate of black and Hispanic men is directly linked to a decrease in the number of minority high school dropouts. By removing potentially lower-quality husbands and fathers from the marriage market via incarceration, it appears, their negative influence on children in the home is reduced. So although a higher black and Hispanic incarceration rate leaves in its wake a higher number of never-married mothers, their children actually end up doing better.

Monday, January 24, 2011

A study by the University of Manchester has predicted that more than half of children in Birmingham will be from black and South and East Asian backgrounds when the census is carried out at the end of March 2011. In 2006, 53% of children under 16 were from white families and this figure is expected to drop substantially to 47% when the census is carried out in a couple of months. Researchers from the university previously calculated that the proportion of children aged under 16 who are from black and other non-white ethnic minorities will rise to about 64% by 2026. A major reason for this is the continued immigration of people from Pakistan, Africa and China.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

The mostly Jewish liberal residents of Park Slope, or at least some of them, are not happy about a plan to put 600 mostly black and Hispanic students in their high priced Brooklyn neighborhood which is mainly populated by investment bankers, lawyers, and Wall Street types.

He was arrested in El Paso, Texas, U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Ramiro Cordero said. A judge in the state of Quintana Roo issued an arrest warrant for the singer, whose full name is Kalimba Kadjhali Marichal Ibar. Prosecutors allege that he raped a teen there in December 2010. A Mexican Attorney General's Office spokesman said that the singer would be transported soon to Quintana Roo. The arrest warrant was issued a month after a 17-year-old girl was allegedly raped in a hotel there. The 28-year-old singer is a former member of the group OV7.

Representing himself at trial, Cruz questioned some of the Seattle-area women whom he'd attacked when they were children. The King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North showed what their courage was worth - an exceptionally long sentence for Cruz that will likely see him locked away for the rest of his life. "He's a child rapist, and he's gonna pay," said Brandi, one of the five young women to testify against Cruz at trial. Sex crime charges were first filed against Cruz in 1997, after a woman with whom he'd been living went to police to report that he had sexually abused her children. He was sentenced to a short jail term in the case after pleading guilty to communicating with a minor for immoral purposes. Weeks after his release, he began abusing other children. Eight months after that, he fled to Mexico and vanished; he was arrested crossing back into the United States in 2008. Investigators ultimately learned that Cruz had repeatedly sexually assaulted at least five children. In some cases, he attacked the children of women he was with; in at least one other, he approached a young teen girl on the street and began a sexual relationship with her. Addressing the judge, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Val Richey noted that the molestation was extremely violent and accompanied by threats. Cruz, he said, left his victims terrified. Richey also noted Cruz, as far as investigators could tell, struck any child he could get his hands on. "Every young girl that he came in contact with for four years was sexually assaulted," Richey told the judge as the jurors who heard the case looked on from the gallery. "In each instance … at each step, Salvador Cruz was extreme," the prosecutor continued. "Salvador Cruz is a grave threat to society. He is a sexual predator of the highest order." For his part, Cruz was smiling and unrepentant in court. He described his victims as creating "stories" and refused to discuss the allegations, which saw him convicted on three counts of first-degree child rape, two counts of third-degree child rape and one count of communication with a minor for immoral purposes.

Acting on an anonymous tip, state police investigators in the city of Tula went to inspect a suspicious vehicle abandoned on the road. The car exploded as the four officers were searching the car. Mexico's attorney general's office, the PGR, has opened a preliminary investigation into the incident, according to a statement by spokeswoman Yazmin Morales. In July 2010, federal police in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez reported that a man dressed in a municipal police uniform and left for dead was used as bait by assailants to lure authorities to a car bomb that left four people dead. In August 2010, at least two car bombs exploded near the television studios of Televisa in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state in northeastern Mexico.

A study claims that blacks and Hispanics are twice as likely as whites to perform heroic deeds. Heroic individuals are people who likely behave impulsively without considering the consequences of their actions (such as wondering whether they are going to get killed). This may also mean that heroic individuals are less intelligent than others since one of the purposes of intelligence is to allow us to think through the consequences of our actions. If true then this may mean that not only are blacks and Hispanics both more heroic and less intelligent than whites but that heroic whites are less intelligent than non-heroic whites.

In 2010, Mexico deported 70,000 illegal aliens from its territory. Some 93% of the deported were Central Americans. In Mexico, illegal aliens are frequently robbed, raped, kidnapped and murdered - sometimes with the collusion of Mexican officials.

According to the 2010 California Standards Tests (CST), only 36% of black students reached the same level. In math, 65% of white students tested proficient compared to 30% of black pupils, according to CST results.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Some words of wisdom from the British philosopher, John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873):

Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. The influences which form opinions and decide political acts are different in the different sections of the country. An altogether different set of leaders have the confidence of one part of the country and of another. The same books, newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, do not reach them. One section does not know what opinions, or what instigations, are circulating in another. The same incidents, the same acts, the same system of government, affect them in different ways; and each fears more injury to itself from the other nationalities than from the common arbiter, the state. Their mutual antipathies are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government. That any one of them feels aggrieved by the policy of the common ruler is sufficient to determine another to support that policy. Even if all are aggrieved, none feel that they can rely on the others for fidelity in a joint resistance; the strength of none is sufficient to resist alone, and each may reasonably think that it consults its own advantage most by bidding for the favor of the government against the rest.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Recently, authorities announced that five mutilated bodies were dumped about 50 miles south of the city in Montemorelos, a place that has historically been known as a peaceful Seventh-Day Adventist town. In addition, 18 people were killed in Monterrey, victims in the latest rash of drug-related violence that has spread fear among residents. Just a few years ago, Monterrey was dubbed the safest city in Latin America and the commercial hub of Mexico. Now, it's fallen victim to the lawlessness and violence spreading throughout the country - a cartel battleground where grenade attacks, shootouts and kidnappings dominate headlines. The rest of the state has also seemingly been victimized by the violence. The high-profile killings began in 2010 and continued into the first week of 2011. Saul Vara Rivera, 48, mayor of Zaragoza in the municipality of Galeana, Nuevo Leon, was shot 23 times in the back. The police forces patrolling Monterrey have been impacted too, with at least 12 officers killed since January 1, 2011. In September 2010, the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning for Monterrey and advised that "the immediate, practical and reliable way to reduce the security risks for all children is to remove them from Monterrey."

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

In an interview, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said Democrats need to "go all out" to win back white Southern voters before the next election. White voters preferred Republican candidates by almost two-to-one in the 2010 midterms. Their support helped the GOP win 22 seats in the states that make up the Old Confederacy. The Democrats' only pickup in the region was the New Orleans district where the party holds a registration advantage. Since November 2010, there have been a string of defections by Southern Democratic state lawmakers, which has prompted renewed speculation about the party’s future in the region. Former Alabama Rep. Artur Davis (D) said Democrats should even consider running as Independents if they want to succeed. Lewis, who was a civil rights activist before being elected to Congress in 1986, said he's concerned the party is losing its diversity, which will make it difficult to reclaim the lost seats. "We've got to go all out and get white voters, especially white men, to come back to the Democratic Party," he said. "I just think it's important for the Democratic Party to roll out and try to reveal itself and not become a party that is split along racial lines." In the 2010 midterm election, white voters favored the GOP by a margin of 60% to 37%, according to the national exit poll conducted by Edison Research. It was a higher percentage than the margin claimed by the GOP during its 1994 landslide victory. Some Democrats, such as Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (Mo.), have predicted Obama's reelection prospects look daunting. "It's realistic for our party to understand the enormous challenge we're going to have to get him back in the White House in 2012," Cleaver, the new chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said recently.

One of the victims, as well as sources quoted in a UN report, accuse Lt Col Kibibi Mutware of links to New Year's Day 2011 rapes in the town of Fizi. There have been numerous cases of mass rape in DR Congo's conflict but this is believed to be the largest single incident allegedly involving the army. From an everyday fight between two men over a woman, violence escalated into a brutal punitive expedition by a group of government troops against the population of Fizi. "A soldier was killed here right beside the hospital," explains Dr Faise Chacha, the head of Fizi hospital. "That started the panic and all our patients fled. We came back at 0500 the next morning and we started taking in people who had been stabbed and others - women - who had been raped." Chacha and the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres have treated 51 rape victims so far, but they expect more as women who fled the attacks slowly return home. As in previous cases of rape in DR Congo, many victims are expected to keep their plight secret to avoid being abandoned by their husbands and families. Lt Col Kibibi is a former member of the CNDP rebel group, which has previously been accused of numerous human rights abuses. The 16 years of unrest in eastern DR Congo have become notorious for the widespread sexual abuse of women and young girls. More than 300 women, men and children were raped by a coalition of rebel groups in the town of Luvungi and neighbouring villages in North Kivu within miles of a UN base in August 2010.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The average black child attends a school that is 59% poor but only 29% white. The typical Latino kid is similarly segregated; his school is 57% poor and 27% white. Overall, a third of all black and Latino children sit every day in classrooms that are 90% - 100% black and Latino.

Israel Weingarten was improperly convicted on one count involving incest that occurred during a trip from Belgium to Israel, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled. The unanimous decree says that citizens can't be found guilty in America for crimes committed overseas unless there's a "territorial nexus to the United States." The three-judge panel upheld other convictions covering abuse that took place during travel from Brooklyn to Belgium, and from Israel to Brooklyn. Weingarten, a member of the Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for traveling across international borders in order to molest the girl, the second-oldest of his eight kids. The now-grown woman tearfully testified against Weingarten during a 2009 Brooklyn federal court trial at which he acted as his own lawyer and angrily cross-examined her on the witness stand.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Rebecca Rutland, 41, says police in the Mexican resort town of Playa del Carmen took the Ontario couple into custody in the late hours of Dec. 31, 2010 following a confrontation between officers and her fiancé. Once in jail, Rutland, a social worker doing her thesis in Thunder Bay, Ont., says two police officers took turns raping her. Rutland and her fiancé, Richard Coleman, 51, of Toronto, also allege officers robbed them of hundreds of dollars and other valuables.

Commerce Minister Faruk Khan said only those registered with a trade body should be able to buy and sell acid from a market. Dozens of women and children are injured in acid attacks every year in Bangladesh. The attacks leave victims terribly disfigured, scarred and disabled. The violence is mostly aimed at young women who reject marriage proposals or sexual advances, or when their families are unable pay their dowries. Sometimes, even children are targeted during family disputes. In 2002, Bangladesh brought in special laws, including a provision for the death sentence, to stop acid attacks. According to the Acid Survivors Foundation, 153 people - mostly women and children - were acid attack victims in 2010.

Researchers examined data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. They found that people who have the genetic marker DRD2, associated with alcoholism, tend to befriend each other, and those who do not have this marker tend to associate with others who lack it. On other other hand, they found a different relationship with a gene involved in the system that metabolizes foreign substances, such as nicotine. It seems that people with this particular marker befriend people who don't have it.

Only 38% of Americans think race relations are getting better. Twenty-nine percent (29%) think relations are getting worse, and 29% think they are staying the same. In January 2009, when the nation inaugurated its first African-American president, 70% of voters said relations between blacks and whites were getting better. By October 2009, in the face of increasing opposition to Obama's policies, just 36% said the same, with 33% saying they were staying about the same and 27% who felt relations between the races were getting worse. A plurality (43%) of Americans also don't believe that celebrating King’s birthday as a national holiday helps improve racial tolerance in the country. Thirty-two percent (32%) say that it does, and 25% are not sure. While 35% of white Americans rate race relations as good or excellent, just 28% of African-Americans and 25% of adults of other backgrounds agree. Similarly, 41% of whites say race relations are getting better, but only 28% of blacks and 29% of those of other races feel the same. Blacks are slightly more inclined than whites and those of other race to feel race relations are getting worse. Most adults (53%) of other races and 44% of whites do not think honoring King with a national holiday promotes racial tolerance. But 47% of blacks disagree. Most African-Americans continue to think the nation is moving in the right direction, while most whites and the majority of those of other races feel the country is on the wrong track.

Drug dealers who were caught during an undercover police operation to clean up St Paul's are trying to overturn anti-social behavior orders banning them from the area. Kirk Barclay, Noah Ntuve, Francis Cowan and Trevor Campbell claim the anti-social behavior orders handed to them as they were jailed at Bristol Crown Court in 2010 will "deprive them of their culture" as black men. They also claim the orders, which will ban them from parts of St Paul's for three years after their release from jail, will prevent them from visiting relatives and are "excessive" and "unenforceable". Lawyers acting for the men brought the challenge at London's Criminal Appeal Court, where they told judges the majority of the city's black community lived in the area. The four men were among 21 people arrested as part of an Avon and Somerset Police drug dealing crackdown called Operation Polar. They were caught selling class A drugs to undercover officers. Barclay, 20, of Campbell Street, St Paul's, was imprisoned for four years and Cowan, also 20, of All Hallows Road, Easton, for 42 months, after both men admitted selling heroin and crack cocaine on a number of occasions. Ntuve, 24, was jailed for five years. Campbell, 20, of Sussex Place, St Paul's, was handed a three-and-a-half year jail term after admitting four drug dealing counts.

The rate among blacks is five times higher. The contrast is even greater looking at rates by neighborhood: Some of Utah’s most ethnically diverse ZIP codes, which also happen to be some of the poorest, have the highest rates of chlamydia.

Final preparations are being made for the funeral of slain Irish newlywed Michaela Harte-McAreavey. The 27-year-old was found strangled in her hotel room on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. She was killed less than two weeks after her wedding. Her funeral will take place at the church where she married John McAreavey on December 30, 2010. Three suspects in her death are all employees of the luxury hotel where the newlywed was found strangled, according to the Mauritius Police Force. Room attendant Avinash Treebhoowoon, 29, and Sandip Moneea, 41, a floor supervisor, have been charged with murder. Room attendant Raj Theekoy, 33, faces a conspiracy charge. Police said one of the men has confessed and participated in the reconstruction. Authorities believe the men were inside the woman's hotel room when she returned alone. Authorities said the killer used an electronic key card to enter the room. The husband was in the restaurant of the hotel when his wife was killed, and is not a suspect. An autopsy showed that she died of asphyxiation.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Scientists have found that the same gene that creates the enzyme which makes people blood type 'O' offers them some protection against heart attacks. The researchers compared almost 6,000 people who had suffered a heart attack with 7,400 people who had a type of coronary heart disease, but had not had a heart attack. They described the association as notable, in view of decades of work suggesting a relation between ABO blood-groups and both thrombosis and coronary heart disease.

Researchers have found that men who sniffed drops of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when they sniffed a neutral saline solution that had been dribbled down women’s cheeks. The findings showed up in a variety of ways, including testosterone levels, skin responses, brain imaging and the men’s descriptions of their arousal. In one experiment, tear-sniffing made the men more likely to rate women in photographs as less sexually attractive. In another, to establish a context of sadness, men watched a scene from the movie “The Champ” after sniffing tears or saline. Sniffers became equally sad with both tears and saline, but tear-sniffers showed reduced sexual arousal and lower levels of testosterone. Finally, the researchers turned to brain imaging. They showed men scenes from “9 ½ Weeks” — specifically the more explicit version that was shown in Europe, which has been validated as being particularly arousing. Functional M.R.I. scans identified the men’s arousal in specific brain areas. Then they sniffed tears or saline and watched sad movies. The tear-sniffers showed less activity in the brain regions that reflected arousal.

A girl raped by three teenagers and a 22-year-old pleaded that she was only 14 years old during an attack her assailants recorded on a cell phone camera, prosecutors said during a bond hearing for one of the suspects. Vicente Hernandez, 22, of Cicero, was ordered held on $600,000 bail after being charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault. The three other suspects - Alex Picallo, 16, Majeed Khalifeh, 18, and Jonathan Leanos, 19, have also been charged.

Ayan Abdulle has been jailed after investigators discovered that the story she used to win asylum – and later British citizenship – was a pack of lies. Abdulle, who also used the fake name Amina Muse and is from Somalia, was living in Gothenburg when the authorities insisted immigrants learn Swedish if they wanted to continue to claim handouts. She told a friend she couldn’t be bothered and moved to England where she knew it would be far easier to collect benefits. She made up a story to gain asylum and gave herself and five of her six children false names and dates of birth, fraudulently claiming benefits on both the real and invented identities and she somehow managed to continue claiming benefits in Sweden for three years after leaving. Abdulle was born in Mogadishu in 1969 but moved to Sweden in 1994. Her friend Hodan Abdullahi Egal, who lives in Gothenburg, said yesterday: ‘Ayan liked life here. She never worked, just took things easy and spent her time meeting up with old friends from Mogadishu. But she couldn’t be bothered to learn another language. Instead she decided to move to England. She said it was the land of easy money. She was convinced she would have no problems there because the system there made it far easier to collect money without proper checks.’ Abdulle arrived in London in 2004 with her first five children, now aged eight to 17, and her husband Raghe Adan, and claimed asylum under the name Amina Ali Muse. In her application, she said militiamen had targeted her home in Somalia on December 1, 1998, shooting her brothers dead. She claimed she had been gang raped while three months pregnant, leading to a miscarriage, and that her niece had been raped, tortured and beaten. In fact, on that date Abdulle had been in Sweden giving birth to a daughter. Between June 2004 and May 2010, Abdulle, who was living in Neasden, North-West London, claimed £261,358.14 in handouts. The cash came from almost every welfare benefit possible, including income support, disability living allowance, carers’ allowance, jobseekers’ allowance, housing benefit, council tax benefit, tax credits and child benefit. Friends and neighbors in London and Sweden said the only man who ever visited her flat was husband Adan, but in Sweden she registered herself as having married a 41-year-old named Hassan Mohamed Osman in 2007 and the father of her sixth child, born in 2009, was given as Abdirashid Mohamed Omar, a Somali who arrived in Britain from Kenya in 2006 claiming to be the husband of Amina Muse. He was granted indefinite leave to remain as her spouse. Abdulle was exposed when she fell out with some members of her family who revealed her fraud to the authorities. Jailing her for four-and-a-half years at Harrow Crown Court for multiple counts of fraud and deception, Judge Stephen Holt described her actions as a professionally planned cynical and dishonest manipulation of the whole system of asylum. Abdulle, who showed no remorse, cannot be deported after finishing her sentence because she was granted British citizenship in 2009.

Purushottam Naresh Dwivedi of the state's governing Bahujan Samaj Party was arrested in Banda district. Dwivedi denies the charge. He says he is diabetic and impotent and hence incapable of rape. Authorities ordered his arrest after the state's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) submitted a report confirming the lawmaker's crime. Two of Dwivedi's aides who are also accused of raping the girl - Rajendra Shukla and Surendra Neta - have already been arrested. Another accused, Ravan Garg, has absconded, police say. Reports say the girl had just begun working for Dwivedi as a domestic servant when she made the complaint. She has been in jail since 12 December, 2010 when she escaped from Dwivedi's house. She was arrested on charges of theft on complaint from the lawmaker. She says she is innocent and campaigners say the theft charged are trumped up. India's women and child development ministry has called for an investigation by the federal investigative agency, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

A report says that India is in the early stages of a chronic disease epidemic which affects the health of both rich and poor people. It calls for a comprehensive national health system to be set up by 2020. Rapidly improving socio-economic status in India is associated with a reduction of physical activity and increased rates of obesity and diabetes. Indians are growing wealthier but exercising less and indulging in fatty foods. They also risk injury by driving more often and faster on the country's notoriously dangerous roads, often under the influence of alcohol. The emerging pattern in India is characterized by an initial uptake of harmful health behaviors in the early phase of socio-economic development. The authors of the report argue that the problem can only be tackled by better education, because bad habits tend to decline once consumers become aware of risks to their health. The report states that overall the poor in India are the most vulnerable to diseases - and are further burdened by having to pay for health-care in a country where health indicators lag behind its impressive economic growth figures. The study also says it is important that India, with its fast-growing population soon exceeding 1.2 billion, takes steps to prevent illnesses such as heart or respiratory diseases, cancer and diabetes. It says that this can be funded by gradually increasing public expenditure and implementing new taxes on tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods.

Some 100 soldiers, marines and police in Xalapa, in the eastern state of Veracruz, had surrounded a house that, it was thought, was being used as a safe house by a gang, officials say. The occupants opened fire and a six-hour gun battle followed. Gen Carlos Aguilar Perez, the commander of the region, said his men had gone to the house after receiving a tip-off from local residents about the presence of armed men there. The general said his men were shot at and had to return fire to defend themselves. Twelve suspected gang members and 2 soldiers were killed in the shooting. The security forces found five long-range and three short-range weapons, as well as grenades, bullet-proof vests and ammunition inside the house, said the general.

Raul Espinoza and his bodyguard were abducted while on patrol in the port city of Boca del Rio. The kidnapping comes just a day after 14 people were killed in a shoot-out between security forces and alleged gang members in the state. Veracruz had so far been spared much of the drug-related violence other Mexican states have suffered. Local media report that the kidnappers posed as federal police agents and managed to fool local police, who stopped them twice. The motive for the kidnapping is unknown, but it follows a stand-off between the security forces and gunmen in the state capital, Xalapa. According to Mexican government figures, more than 34,000 people have died in drug-related violence in recent years.

Since 2010's devastating earthquake, experts say women and girls are even more vulnerable to gender based attacks. Rape has been only considered a crime in Haiti since 2005, but prosecutions are rare. Since the earthquake, the wave of rapes have multiplied. The fact that there are no lights in the camps has meant that, at night, anything can happen. Anybody can come into any tent and do whatever they want. Particularly vulnerable are women who don't have husbands or anybody else to support them.

Friday, January 14, 2011

"The 12-year-old albino was killed by four men with guns and knives. They cut off his left hand and fled away with it," Joseph Ntahuga, a government administrator, said. Witch doctors covet the blood and body parts of albinos, believing they bring good luck. The murder marks the 14th killing of an albino in Burundi since 2008. Ntahuga said the victim has two other albino siblings. Officials believe the albino hunters are working with witch doctors in Tanzania where albino killings are common.

Abdel Nur pleaded guilty in 2010 to providing support for the plot planned by Russell Defreitas and Abdul Kadir, a former member of Guyana's parliament. Kadir and Russell Defreitas, who worked at JFK, reportedly intended to kill thousands of people in the 2007 scheme. Kadir, 58, was sentenced to life in prison in December 2010. Nur, 60, attempted to locate an al-Qaeda explosives expert and introduce Kadir and Defreitas, a former airline cargo worker from Guyana who became a naturalized US citizen, to a leader of a militant group in Trinidad, court documents said. Kadir and Defreitas, who began preparations for the attack in 2006, planned to use explosives to blow up fuel tanks and underground pipes that ran through a nearby neighborhood, the court said. The scheme was uncovered when an informant recorded a discussion about the planned attack between Kadir and 67-year-old Defreitas. A US District Court judge said that the plot, which Kadir and Defreitas thought would shake the US economy, would have caused unimaginable devastation.

In court papers, prosecutors say Naeem Ahmed, 41, has been bombarding Tatiana Schlossberg, 20, with mushy notes and gifts since 2008. But Ahmed's lawyer said the apparent obsession started well before then. "It goes as far back as five to eight years," lawyer Gerald Hertz said, adding that his client wouldn't explain his interest in the Kennedy family. It's unclear why Manhattan prosecutors didn't include the earlier contacts in their criminal complaint, but it seems Kennedy's family may have contacted authorities after Ahmed tried twice to see Tatiana in person. The wannabe taxi driver, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, sent more than 40 e-card greetings and gifts like roses and balloons to the Yale student. In some of the notes, Ahmed addressed Schlossberg as "Hunny Bunny" and signed off as "Your Hubby." One card had a montage of bare-skin photos, piano keys, champagne flutes and a bed strewn with rose petals - and was accompanied by piano music. "I know you, I know the feeling of you, I know your shape, your sound, your warmth, and your taste. I know you, and I know that I want you, and I need you. . . . Always," it read. Ahmed was arrested Dec. 8, 2010 and is being held in lieu of $25,000 bail and a psychiatric evaluation.

Also, blacks die of heart disease much more often than whites, and die younger, despite the availability of cheap prevention measures like weight loss, exercise, blood-pressure and cholesterol drugs, and aspirin. The same is true for strokes. High blood pressure is twice as common among blacks as whites, but the group with the least success in controlling it is Mexican-Americans. Blacks, Hispanics and American Indians, whether gay or straight, all have higher rates of new infection with the AIDS virus than whites, and the situation is getting worse for blacks and American Indians. Asians have the lowest rate. Teenage pregnancy is holding steady or falling for all ethnic groups, but is still three times as common among Hispanic girls as among white girls, and more than twice as common among black girls as among whites.

The love and trust that the hormone oxytocin promotes is not toward the world in general, but just towards a person’s in-group. Oxytocin turns out to be the hormone of the clan, not of universal brotherhood. Psychologists trying to specify its role have now concluded it is the agent of ethnocentrism. Reading the growing literature on the warm and cuddly effects of oxytocin, psychologists decided on evolutionary principles that no one who placed unbounded trust in others could survive. Thus there must be limits on oxytocin’s ability to induce trust and they set out to define them. Based on experiments in which subjects distributed money, the psychologists showed that doses of oxytocin made people more likely to favor the in-group at the expense of an out-group. With a new set of experiments they extended the study to ethnic attitudes, using Muslims as the out-group for his subjects, Dutch college students. This group was chosen because of a 2005 poll that showed that 51% of Dutch citizens held unfavorable opinions about Muslims. The psychologists found that Dutch subjects exposed to oxytocin were more likely to favor other Dutch people over Muslims. Oxytocin creates inter-group bias primarily because it motivates in-group favoritism and because it motivates out-group derogation.

Rabbi Dov Lior says Jewish Law prohibits sterile couples from conceiving using non-Jew's sperm, as it causes adverse traits. Rabbi Dov Lior, a senior authority on Jewish law in the Religious Zionism movement, asserted recently that a Jewish woman should never get pregnant using sperm donated by a non-Jewish man – even if it is the last option available. According to Lior, a baby born through such an insemination will have the "negative genetic traits that characterize non-Jews." Instead, he advised sterile couples to adopt. "Sefer HaChinuch (a book of Jewish law) states that the character traits of the father pass on to the son," he said. "If the father in not Jewish, what character traits could he have? Traits of cruelty, of barbarism! These are not traits that characterize the people of Israel." Lior added identified Jews as merciful, shy and charitable – qualities that he claimed could be inherited. "A person born to Jewish parents, even if they weren't raised on the Torah – there are things that are passed on (to him) in the blood, it's genetic," he explained. "If the father is a gentile, then the child is deprived of these things."

The pair were found guilty in Punjab province of tearing down a poster of a gathering to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. They deny blasphemy. A Christian leader said this was the first time a jail term had been handed down under the blasphemy law, which carries a mandatory death sentence. Christian woman Asia Bibi is on death row for allegedly insulting Islam. The conviction of the Muslim father and son was Pakistan's first under its blasphemy law since the assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who had backed proposed reforms to the legislation. The sentence was handed down by an anti-terrorism court in the city of Dera Ghazi Khan in eastern Punjab province. It followed an incident in the small town of Noor Shah Talai, in southern Punjab's Muzaffargarh district, in April 2010, defense lawyer Arif Gurmani said. He said the convicted pair, Mohammad Shafi, 45, and his 20-year-old son, Mohammad Aslam, had been running a grocery shop in a small market. Shafi is also a prayer leader at a nearby mosque. The complainant, Phool Khan, alleged that the pair had ripped down and trampled a poster of a gathering to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. It had been posted on a pillar outside the grocery shop. The lawyer said they would launch an appeal against the sentence in Lahore High Court, as he claimed the allegations had been motivated by sectarian differences. He said his clients followed the Deobandi school, while the complainant was from the Barelvi sect - both are Sunni Muslim branches of Islam. Experts say the Barelvi school, although considered moderate, promotes a cult following of the Prophet Muhammad. The Deobandi school - better known because of its Taliban supporters - is viewed as emphasizing the ritual and temporal aspects of religion. Barelvis have been in the forefront of a recent campaign against reforms to the blasphemy law. Critics say the blasphemy law has been used to persecute minority faiths in Pakistan and is exploited by people with personal grudges. The law has been in the spotlight since the assassination of Governor Taseer by one of his own bodyguards. Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri, who has confessed to the killing, said he was angered by Taseer's backing for proposed reforms to the blasphemy law, and by his support for the condemned Christian woman Asia Bibi. She was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad during an argument with other farmhands in a Punjab village in June 2009. She says she is innocent. Pope Benedict XVI, who has led calls for her release, said that the blasphemy law should be scrapped, provoking a backlash from protesters in the Punjab capital of Lahore.

Susana Chavez was found strangled and with one hand cut off in Ciudad Juarez. Chavez tried to draw attention to the killing of mainly poor women in the border town in the 1990s. Officials say her murder was not related to her activism. The Chihuahua State Attorney General's Office said she was killed by three teenagers high on drugs, who cut off her hand to make it look like the murder was connected to organized crime. Chavez, 36, coined the slogan "Not One More Death", which became popular at protests against the Ciudad Juarez killings and the failure of the police to solve them. More than 300 women were murdered in Ciudad Juarez in a wave of violence which started in 1993 and lasted for a decade. There is no generally accepted motive for the murders. They have been variously attributed to serial killers, drug cartels and domestic violence. Some of the killings are believed to have been sexually motivated. Chavez was active in an organization called May Our Daughters Return Home, which represents the families and friends of the killed women. But Attorney General for Chihuahua State Carlos Manuel Salas says her death was the result of an "unfortunate encounter" with the teenagers, who got involved in an argument with Chavez and strangled her. Human rights group Amnesty International said that although her murder did not seem to be related to her activism, Chavez's killing was another sign that violence against women was again on the rise in Ciudad Juarez. Ciudad Juarez is the most violent city in Mexico, with 3,100 people killed in 2010 out of a population of more than a million.

Mauritius earned the top rating for the region, ranking 12th in the world. It was the only sub-Saharan nation to break into the Top 20. One category in which the region fell short was freedom from corruption. The region continues to lag far behind in most measures. Political instability and poor management of macroeconomic policies severely impede overall economic development in much of the region. Sub-Saharan Africa ranks last among the six regions of the world in seven of the 10 measures. It lags behind in business freedom and property rights and freedom from corruption. Labor freedom scores also are low, reflecting in part the region’s lack of progress in developing modern and efficient labor regulation. This region is the world’s poorest.

The region continues to enjoy a higher standard of living than any other region and 26 of the 43 economies in the European region ended 2010 freer than at the start of the year. Taken as a whole, the region continues to enjoy economic prosperity and stability. Europe’s consistent and enduring embrace of free-market economics has yielded the highest per capita GDP in the world. Average per capita GDP among its five most economically free nations stands at $47,570 – five times that of the five freest countries in sub-Saharan Africa (the least economically free region in the world).

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

In 2009 there was a gap of 27 percentage points between fourth-grade white students and African American students, and a gap of 22 percentage points between white and Latino students in math. There also was a 28 percentage point gap between white and African American fourth-graders in reading. A report issued by the Center on Education Policy says that if nothing changes, it will take 35 years to close the reading achievement gap between white and African American students and 29 years for Latino students to catch up.

Nearly six in 10 Americans say the country’s heated political rhetoric is not to blame for the Tucson shooting rampage that left six dead and critically wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, according to a CBS News poll. There’s mounting evidence that the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords wasn’t a political act at all but a plan by a disturbed high school dropout who had few friends and no clear agenda. Instead, Loughner may have had some self-generated dislike of Giffords that stemmed from when he first spoke to her at an event in 2007. The CBS poll shows that only 42% of Democrats and 33% of independents believe that the shootings were a political act.

Hispanics have a 41.3% abortion rate. Asians have a 22.7% abortion rate and non-Hispanic whites have a 20.4% abortion rate. The fact that 41% of all pregnancies in New York City end in abortion is not a secret and it's not anything new. Back in 1998, the number was actually 46%.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

A classmate of the man accused of shooting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has described him as "left wing" and a "pot head" in a series of posts on Twitter. Caitie Parker tweeted that he was "quite liberal" and a "political radical."

According to the poll, 62% attend religious services at Christmas, 65% display decorations with a religious meaning, 93% exchange gifts, 88% have a Christmas tree and 78% take time to reflect on the birth of Jesus Christ.

Alysa Stanton, who is the country’s first black woman rabbi, will be leaving her Greenville, N.C. pulpit — after the congregation that hired her less than two years ago decided not to renew her contract. Stanton said the decision to leave was not hers, and that she fully intends to serve out the duration of her contract, which expires July 31, 2011.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

The victims are all men between the ages of 25 and 30 years old. Police were led to the bodies by a group of burning vehicles, the security office said. A 16th body was found in a nearby car. The victim was a 30-year-old man who was shot to death, the office said. The killings are believed to be drug related. According to authorities, more than 28,000 people have died in Mexico in drug-related violence since 2006. Police and military forces have stepped up operations in the region in light of the grisly discoveries.

The Blackburn MP spoke out after two South Asian men who raped and sexually assaulted girls in Derby were given indefinite jail terms. Straw said there was a specific problem in some areas of the country where Pakistani men target vulnerable young white girls. Mohammed Liaqat, 28, and Abid Saddique, 27, were jailed at Nottingham crown court after being found guilty at a trial in November 2010 of charges including rape. Saddique was jailed for at least 11 years while Liaqat will be locked up for at least eight years. The pair were the ringleaders of a gang that groomed and abused girls aged from 12 to 18. The sentences were passed down a day after the prime minister, David Cameron, said cultural sensitivities should not hinder police action in such cases. Six other men had already been sentenced for their part in the abuse, investigated in Operation Retriever, led by Derbyshire police.

Fully 60% of whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections; only 37% supported Democrats. Not even in Republicans’ 1994 congressional landslide did they win that high a percentage of the white vote. Moreover, those results may understate the extent of the white flight from the Democratic Party. The new data show that white voters not only strongly preferred Republican House and Senate candidates but also registered deep disappointment with Obama’s performance, hostility toward the cornerstones of the current Democratic agenda, and widespread skepticism about the expansive role for Washington embedded in the party’s priorities. On each of those questions, minority voters expressed almost exactly the opposite view from whites. These results could carry profound implications for 2012. They suggest that economic recovery alone may not solve Obama’s problems with many of the white voters who stampeded toward the Republican Party in 2010.

Friday, January 7, 2011

They said four women and four children were shot dead and that a number of other people were injured. The minibus was traveling between Catacamas and Juticalpa in central Honduras. Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world, with much of the killing blamed on violent gangs known as Maras. The attackers tried to force the driver to stop and opened fire with assault rifles when he failed to do so. Police were exploring possible links to drug traffickers.

Dominican security forces set up dozens of road blocks on the outskirts of the capital, Santo Domingo, amid fears about the spread of cholera. They say they stopped thousands of Haitians crossing the border in search of work, many of them illegally. Immigration officials say that at least 950 have been deported in 2011. The Dominican authorities say the move is crucial if they are going to stop the spread of cholera. Some 3,500 people have died from the disease in Haiti. About 150 people are known to have contracted it in the Dominican Republic. The United Nations has estimated that before the earthquake, around 600,000 Haitians lived in the Dominican Republic illegally. Director of Migration for the Dominican Republic Sigfrido Pared says that number has since reached one million.

Under the ban imposed in the southern town of Jowhar, men and women who are not related are also barred from walking together or chatting in public. The al-Shabab administration said those who disobeyed the new rules would be punished according to Sharia law. The penalty would probably be a public flogging. The Islamic militant group has already banned music in areas that it controls, which include most of central and southern Somalia. Somalia has not had a stable government since 1991.

In 2009, there were 225,667 pregnancies in New York City with 126,774 resulting in live births and 87,273 resulting in abortions. In addition to those abortion numbers, there were 11,620 spontaneous terminations. About 46% of all births in the Bronx result in abortions — the highest in the five boroughs.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

In the biggest bust of its kind in recent memory, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authorities at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport arrested a Nigerian woman carrying 91 pellets of heroin inside her body. In all, 32-year-old Sherifat Lamidi had swallowed 2½ pounds of the drug, packed inside balloon-like packaging. Lamidi, a Nigerian citizen, originated her itinerary from her home country and flew to Frankfurt, Germany. Once there, she boarded a Lufthansa Airlines flight to Detroit. A CBP agent flagged her for a closer inspection upon arrival. Lamidi admitted to authorities that she was carrying narcotics, but she said she did not know exactly what she had swallowed or how much. Authorities took her to a medical facility where, under the supervision of doctors, she finalized the expulsion of the 91 pellets. Lamidi was arrested at the scene, and prosecution against her is pending.

A report by Amnesty International says armed gangs prowl the makeshift camps set up after the earthquake, preying on vulnerable women. It says the camps lack security and that the police response is inadequate. It has called on the government to do more to reduce the threat to women. Amnesty International spoke to 50 survivors of sexual violence including a 14-year-old girl in the capital, Port-au-Prince, who was punched and then raped. Another women said she and a friend were bound and gagged and sexually assaulted in front of their children. Women and girls in the camps are especially vulnerable because their makeshift shelters provide no protection against attackers. During the night armed youth gangs just go inside the tents or they rip through the tents with knives or blades, and they just rape the women they find. One young woman said that she was raped in a camp soon after giving birth. Kofaviv, a group that has been helping Amnesty International with its research, says it has reports of attacks on children as young as four or five. The organization found that most of these crimes go unpunished. Sexual violence and impunity for rapists was widespread in Haiti before the earthquake, but attackers are now even more likely to get away with their crimes because the Haitian justice system broke down after the disaster and the police lack manpower. In the first six months after the earthquake, at least 250 cases of rape were reported; a year on and serious sexual assault is still taking place.

The humanitarian agency, Doctors Without Borders, said 33 women were raped in Fizi, South Kivu, in the eastern part of the war-torn country. Women had been restrained with ropes or beaten unconscious with the butt of a gun before being attacked, some in front of their children. Up to four armed men were involved at a time and homes and shops were looted. Rape is a frequent weapon of war in Congo, the United Nations says. It has named the Democratic Republic of Congo the "rape capital of the world," with 15,000 women raped in eastern Congo in 2009. A U.N. report in September 2010 slammed Congo's security forces for failing prevent a wave of mass rapes over several days during the summer. The preliminary report confirmed the rape of at least 303 civilians between July 30, 2010 and August 2, 2010 in the Walikale region of Congo's North Kivu province and the rapes have clearly not stopped. Doctors Without Borders provided medical and psychosocial care for 5,600 rape victims in North and South Kivu in 2009.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton dismissed each of the two charges made against Union City, and one of the two claims against the school district in the suit filed by Angelique Paige, the mother of Vernon Eddins, a black 14-year-old shot in Union City by a group of young men in 2007. Paige's wrongful death lawsuit, filed in early 2009, said that officials from the city and the school district had ignored threats of racially motivated violence made by Latino gangs against her son and other black students before the fatal shooting. She also claimed that Union City's police department had violated her son's constitutional rights because it did not provide him and other black students the same protection they had given Latino gang members, and that police knew that racially motivated threats were being made toward black students. But Hamilton ruled in an Oakland courtroom that Paige and her attorneys had not proved the claims. Eddins was slain Dec. 21, 2007, after he and several of his friends encountered a group of 18- to 20-year-old Latino men in front of Barnard-White Middle School, police said. In 2009, police offered a $35,000 reward to anyone providing information that would lead to an arrest and conviction for the homicide. The case remains unsolved. Attorneys John Burris and Pamela Price, representing five East Bay families, filed a class-action lawsuit in 2010 claiming that Union City and the school district violated the civil rights of black youths by failing to protect them from violence. One of the incidents cited by the attorneys occurred in January 2010, when eight black Union City youths - one of whom wore clothing bearing Eddins' picture - were fired upon with a gun but not struck at Southland mall in Hayward. Burris and Price said that the group of black youths was targeted by a Latino gang based in Union City.

Students in New Jersey performed generally better in math and science than in reading, but the proficiency of black and Hispanic students in both reading and math was far below the proficiency level of their Asian and white classmates. Achievement gaps tend to open up at the third through fifth grade levels, and continue to widen into high school.

Some 57% of respondents said the influx of immigrants and foreign workers greatly endangers the Jewish nature of the State of Israel, while approximately 21% thought the danger was only moderate. Only 19% said the situation only slightly undermined the Jewish character of the state, or did not endanger it at all. Among the ultra-Orthodox, religious and traditional respondents, a vast majority believed that the State's Jewish character was jeopardized (93%, 85% and 71% respectively), while some 43% of secular people responded similarly. When asked what they would think if a mosque or a church was to be built next to their place of residence, some 43% respondents said they would firmly oppose it. "Absolutely not, this is the Jewish state and it is forbidden to build such places," replied 80% of haredim, 69% of the religious, 52% of traditionalists and 31% of secular respondents. In contrast, 30% said they would agree unwillingly and ask for the structure to be modest, and 27% said it was a right that should be granted to all worshipers – regardless of their faith (36% of secular people, 17% of traditionalists, 4% of the religious and 10% of haredim held this view).